


1001/2 Years

by Starcrossedsky



Series: YWKON [11]
Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crossover, Found Family, Found Family Who Are Actually Also Literally Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Justified Murder, Various and Sundry Traumas, YWKON, being a blade sucks and then you live again, honestly more than implied on both those counts, xenoblade au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29291073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: [YWKON]Rewriting the system allows blades to wake up without drivers. It allows them to be free.Even the ones who never planned on it. Even the ones who didn't want it at the time.(You can always find something worth living for, if someone is willing to reach out their hand.)
Relationships: Asch the Bloody & Jade Curtiss, Jade Curtiss & Mythra
Series: YWKON [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1222385
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1001/2 Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rarmaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/gifts).



> hello ywkon how are you! Surprise, it's in the soup now!
> 
> Okay so: First, yes the title is a Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days joke, and thus pronounced "A thousand and one years over two." I don't make the rules, Tetsuya Nomura did, it was called 2.999 in drafts.
> 
> Second: Yes, as 2.999 implies, it's (part of) the buildup to ywkon3, if such a thing ever exists. Rar has given me free rein to run off with it and I have Ideas. But this is just... establishment, of "oh hey Asch is around now." It takes place proooooobably six to eight months after ywkon2 (Do You Know Her?), but is mostly Asch-Jade-Mythra centric.
> 
> Third: I didn't label the POV shifts. Deal with context clues or suffer, sorry.

When it gets to be too much, you go out to the forest to explore.

Not in the direction of the crater, the glassy place where the cannon's blast destroyed everything, still so close to the town. You go the opposite direction, into the unknown parts of the woods.

Anna and Malos told you about the ruins out here, older than anyone you know (except Mithos and Martel). They predate even the countries you know, and have long been reduced to weathered stone and mossy rubble.

It's peaceful out here. When Lloyd needs to think, he picks up a project, something to do with his hands. When Zelos needs to think, he goes up, to a roof or whatever high point he can reach.

You run. You run and you run, with the thoughtless grace that you inherited from Martel instead of your own inherent clumsiness, run until you can be sure nothing will cage you in, not even your own thoughts. Only once you've run far enough that all you can feel of your family is two dots in the emotional bleed, both warm with faint concern (because you don't like being separated, either) do you slow down.

You don't have to worry about being found. You're not that good with other kinds of ether even if an Aegis _can_ use them, but the trick Martel used to use to avoid being noticed is still almost a reflex. The only person who would notice you is an actual dark blade, and only if they were paying attention. And even if you were found, you know your family would come for you.

Most of the ruins have been retaken by nature almost completely. Only foundations remain of what must have been houses and shops, the streets only recognizable as such when you plot them out, the paving long buried under the dirt of the forest. There are only a few buildings that were more stone than anything, enough to resist the passage of time. You've followed what was once the outer wall in a circle already - the town was closer to a city, once upon a time. Not as big as Meltokio, but much larger than the village and refuge that is the only settlement for miles around.

Other than the outer wall, the building that's in the best condition is the church.

The roof is long gone, and no trees grow inside its walls, leaving the interior open to the sky through a gap in the reaching branches. The west wall has crumbled outwards, but most of the others are standing still, with the gaping outlines of windows, arching and round. They must have been stained glass once; when you dig, you can find pieces of blue and green glass, worn down into pebbles, near the bases. You found one that was almost the same shade as Martel's core, and you kept it for luck. For memories.

It's a nice place to be lonely, when you need to be alone.

But this time, when you go out there, you aren't alone. A blade sings at the edge of your senses, one cut free of any resonance with a driver (still a strange thing to think of, even though it's getting to be more commonplace and you've seen it not just in town but in other places a few times, now) - 

A blade sings at the edge of your senses, and it's such a _sad_ song.

You slow almost to a stop, walking carefully and quietly up to the arch of where doors once were. The blade at the front of the church is a dark blade, too, using the same trick to avoid being noticed or disturbed. He's better with it than you, wrapped in it like a cloak, but of course he would be. You're not a dark blade, even if you were taught to do this by one.

But that isn't all he is. No blade other than an Aegis should have multiple elements, except - 

You touch the data in the node on the network, and almost recoil from it. A blade made out of many, not in chunks (not like you and Martel, who were still separate people in the end) but grown together smoothly into one whole.

Half a whole? It feels incomplete, somehow.

You don't dare dig too deeply, and you don't get a chance, anyway. Even as you're pulling that tiny bit of data from the server, he notices you. You're not at all hidden by the doorway, so he _must_ see you standing there.

"I'm sorry!" you say, bowing awkwardly, straightening the bottom of your skirt. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

When there's no response, you lift your head to look at him properly.

He's staring at you, slight shock on his face. His hair is bright red, only half a shade darker than your brother's, and his dark clothing hides his core crystal and all of his ether lines. If it weren't for the obvious ether output around him, he could pass for human.

(In other words, a human probably _would_ think he was human.)

"It's just that," you continue, filling the space between you with words because you can't think of anything else to do, "no one really comes here, so sometimes I do, when I need to think, and we've never met before so you must have come from very far away, so - "

Your rambling doesn't seem to make him more comfortable. If anything, it might be doing just the opposite. He finally interrupts you, "Lady Aegis, please, there's no need to - you have every right to be here." 

"Oh," you say, stopping.

His accent is strange. The only one you've heard that resembles it at all is Kratos', so you can't help thinking it sounds old. Most blades pull their accents from their drivers, but he doesn't have a driver, so you guess that that must be the accent his last driver had.

It doesn't get less awkward when he bows back at you. "No, no, please," you say. "I'm not anyone special, you don't have to call me - " And then your brain catches up and you realize that he identified you as the Aegis on sight, or on ether signature. Which isn't _that_ unusual, you've had blades do it before, but always when you were with your whole family, not alone like this. 

It's not like you're hiding your core crystal, but it still puts you off balance. Literally, as you flail your hands apologetically in his direction, take a step forward, and keep going forward when your toe hooks on a piece of fallen stone hidden under the edge of a fern. You fall straight towards him, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of you, arms flung out in front too slowly to catch yourself.

You glance up, a pained smile on your face. "See? Nothing special. I can't even put my feet in the right place."

He doesn't laugh. He looks like he's afraid to laugh, fighting a smile off his face with pure force of will. But there's something brighter, less sad, in his eyes, as he steps forward and bends, to help pull you to your feet.

You take his hand when he offers it. Even through the glove, you can feel the way his ether swirls - an impure synergy, too many elements underneath, less like you and Martel and more like Mithos with all those shards buried in his chest, with wings like shattered glass panes.

It surprises you, that it doesn't take effort not to recoil. There's nothing natural about him, and yet it's the most natural thing in the world to let him help you up, like any other person.

"So please, just call me Colette," you say, trying for firm. Because that's how you want to be treated, like any other person.

It seems to make him relent, just a bit, because a shadow of that light in his eyes shows on the rest of his face. "Then call me Asch," he replies, and you nod.

"Sure!" you agree, maybe a little too loudly and too easily. But the moment Asch glances away from you, the weight of the sad song he isn't trying to sing seems to fill the air again, even with the light you've introduced. There's light ether under his skin, but it's hidden as though stuffed away, as far as it can be. It might not be that the darkness clings to him; it might be the other way around.

Asch looks away from you, at what remains of the walls, and quietly says, "I slept so long, they even got a new Aegis," and you suddenly understand a lot more.

Blades have been waking up, blades that were asleep for a long, long time. You know this intellectually, but it's not something that really mattered, not when they were normal blades. They were starting fresh, the same way they had always done, except without a driver this time.

Asch, whoever and whatever else he might be, is a blade who remembers. Who came to this place, maybe lived here, when there were still people living here. When there was glass in the windows, and houses on the streets instead of trees.

No wonder everything about him is so heart-clenchingly sad. If you went to sleep and woke up, and the world had changed so much that everything you knew was just ruins... You can't imagine it, don't want to imagine it.

Your hand comes involuntarily to your chest, running over your core crystal. It's smooth now, the patterns Martel's shards once made gone, but you feel like you can still feel them, under your fingers. And Martel had Mithos and Kratos, and Yuan's journal, some proof that the life she lived existed outside her own memories...

And Kratos is the oldest flesh eater anyone knows about, and this place was already ruins by the time that happened. You asked him about it, once, and he was the one who was able to point out the details that made the church a church, but that's all. It's centuries older than him.

No wonder disturbing Asch, in this place, felt almost like disturbing a ghost. He might as well be.

(You won't ask him how he remembers. That's his business, and you're sure everyone else will want to know, will ask him if you bring him back to them. You think it would be good for him - to be less lonely, in your family of outcasts - but you won't push him.)

"Can you tell me about it?" you ask, hesitant and gentle. "What it was like, when people lived here?"

(It's hard to be lonely when you aren't alone. It's hard to be sad, when someone picks up a little bit of that sadness with you.)

There's still darkness in that smile. But darkness was your first companion, your first friend, the first choice you ever made for yourself.

Asch looks at the gaping hole of the central window again, and says, "I guess a little bit of history won't hurt."

\----

Colette's part of the emotional bleed jolts in surprise, and then almost immediately hums with a deepening sadness, about an hour after she takes off for the ruins in the woods. Little bursts of shock keep flaring up, though, enough that you feel Lloyd considering going after her, probably before Lloyd himself realizes that's what he's considering.

You put a hand on his shoulders before he goes anywhere. "She's fine, Lloyd," you say. "You know if she wasn't, she'd be pulling on ether like you wouldn't believe." 

"I know," Lloyd says, glancing into the direction of the ruin, where the tug of Colette sits. The emotion bleed continues to be full of the kind of sadness your sister buries under a smile any chance she gets. "I just worry, after what happened to you before..."

You'd rather not think about that at the moment, but you can still stand the thought long enough to reassure him with, "Well, it's not like that's going to happen again. Some of us only have one creator, Mr. 'I have three parents who are all awesome.' And there's not much else that could stop Colette from getting back to us if she _was_ in trouble."

That, you're confident in. Plus, it's only an hour of running away, which means that by flying, it's not even half an hour. No time at all.

Colette's emotional bleed sparks with something more cheerful, something that sounds like her laugh, and both you and Lloyd become a little less tense, where your hand is still on his shoulder. Some tension inside you eases, also. Colette can smile at anything (something the two of you have in common), but she can only be happy when she's safe.

"She'll be alright," you say, and Lloyd nods this time, sighing. 

"What do you think happened?" Lloyd says.

"Who knows? Maybe she found some orphaned bunnies," you say. It's a little dismissive, but only because you're completely confident that Colette will tell you all about it when she returns. "Come on, it's gonna rain soon, and I'm not the water blade here. Let's get inside before it ruins my hair."

You toss said hair in a red cascade over your shoulder, a gesture you perfected for standing in front of crowds that couldn't see you in any detail. Now you only have to use it for joking around, and you can almost forget its origins. Especially with the way it makes Lloyd brighten and smile.

"Sure, sure," he says, nudging you in the shoulder as he starts towards the house. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to your curls, I know."

"See, you understand me," you say, swinging your arm over his shoulders and letting him lead you inside.

Colette takes her time getting back, a faint trickle of ether indicating that she's keeping dry, at least. When it gets to be close to dinner, you can admit to a little anxiety, just a _little_ , nothing compared to Lloyd's restless wandering of the public floor of the tavern-inn his (uncles? your extended family is weird and circular) run out here in the middle of the woods. 

Business is seasonal and it's the off-season, now, which means you can hang out downstairs without being disturbed by the fur traders and other hunters going into the deep woods or coming out to go to sell their wares at the actual town a couple hours down the way. So there's not really anyone in the room you're not at least kind of related to; Jade is hanging out in his usual position at the bar going over the books, Anna two seats down with political correspondence that she's complaining heartily to Malik about, Mythra chilling at a table looking like she's going to challenge Lloyd to a spar if he keeps pacing like that, rain or no rain. It's the sounds of home that you're still getting used to thinking of as home.

You're flipping through the pages of a letter from Sheena, yourself, when you feel Colette's presence get close enough to bother being interested in. There's another energy signal with her - a powerful one, unfamiliar and hard to pin down to a specific element, but definitely a blade.

You and Lloyd look up at the door at the same time. (Behind you, you hear Mythra mutter, " _Finally_.")

From the other side of it, you hear Colette's voice - "And here we are! Space is a little tight, but I'm sure Uncle Malik will let you stay for a while - " and the door swings open.

The blade standing behind your sister makes you doubletake a little, not so much because he looks like you (he doesn't, really, not in the face, lots of him sharp where you're soft), but because you've never seen hair like that on anyone who _wasn't_ a fire blade, and that would have been easy for you to identify. You're a fire blade, you know one when you sense one, and this guy is...

Well, on second read, he's not _not_ a fire blade, but in the way Mithos wasn't not not a fire blade, when he was a broken mosaic of every blade he could find. There's a sour taste in your mouth at the thought, one that not even your sister's smile can dispel, though you're careful to keep it limited to the emotional bleed and not your face.

The dark clothes with every bit of ether line covered up is certainly a look, though. You frown and fold your letter down, even as Colette tugs the strange blade inside. He doesn't feel like a flesh eater, either, but nothing else should have that much power. His ether signature is almost as big as yours and Colette's (individually, of course, not together) and bigger than Jade's. You have the guy right there to compare with, it's not even like you need to run the numbers to know that Colette somehow found a blade stronger than the strongest flesh eater in the known world _out in the woods on an afternoon run_.

All of this flashes through your thoughts in the time it takes Colette to say, "Hi guys! Sorry I'm late, but I met someone at the ruins. This is Asch, he just woke up because of the system reset, and I guess he used to live around here a long time ago!"

And then she cheerfully shoves the strange blade forward as though there's nothing weird about what she just said, nothing completely _impossible_ about a blade who remembers _where he used to live_ before waking up.

You really did get all the appropriate suspicion in this resonance, because Lloyd immediately strides forward and sticks out his hand. "It's nice to meet you!" he says. "I'm Llord Irving, Colette and Zelos' driver."

The strange blade recovers awkwardly, straightening his shoulders before accepting Lloyd's hand. "So I've heard," he replies, accent archaic and lilting, almost like a song.

They exchange a firm shake before their hands break apart. You run an analysis automatically, but as far as you can tell, there's no effects from the touch on Lloyd's hand. Your driver keeps talking, turning around the room as he does to introduce everyone else.

"That's Zelos, of course," he says, starting with you, his smile warm and welcoming and the emotional bleed, at least, is for you rather than the stray Colette's brought home. 

You put a smile on that you don't feel and cheerfully respond, "Yo," with a little wave. The new arrival eyes you for a moment, before nodding and following Lloyd's gestures.

"That's my mom, Anna, and my uncle Malik," Anna turns her stool to give a little wave of her own, and you see a faint jerk to the new blade's shoulders at the sight of her. You don't have time to consider it, though, because the introductions continue down the bar. "And that's - "

"Jade," the new blade says, and there's so much of _something_ there, something heavy and nameless and explanatory of why Colette's sadness opened up to him immediately. It sounds like the echo of a stone thrown down a well, hitting the side just once before vanishing down the bottom silently.

The weight of it isn't angry, even though you feel your guard coming up immediately anyway. Jade freezes, both figuratively, his pen in his hand, and literally, a chill of ether flicking through the room.

"Ah," Jade says, and you barely know him but you know the edge of a knife, the edge of a fall, when it's in someone's voice. "Have we met?"

"...Not for a long time," the blade says, and there's something distinctly aching in that. The pain anyone who has seen a blade they considered a friend come back as someone who didn't know them, probably. "Of course, you're not the Jade from back then. Sorry."

The cold tightens down another notch. You don't know the story, no one's told you the story and you don't _ask_ about a flesh eater's story, but you've lived around Lloyd's family (around Kratos, and Anna, and _yourself_ ) long enough to see when someone touches on some part of history that can only end badly, and you see it on Jade's face.

"I suppose not," Jade says, "but if you'll bear with my curiosity - just how long ago was it, that we would have known each other?"

The strange blade hesitates just for a moment, and then says, "From the date Colette told me, about a thousand years."

It isn't just that it _feels_ like ice shattering. Ice actually does shatter, even if it's only the handful of cubes in the bottom of your mostly-empty glass cracking down the middle, the sides frosting up. Being the most powerful stable flesh eater has its drawbacks, too, but you've never seen Jade do more than chill the air unintentionally the few months you've known him.

Mythra stands in a single, swift movement, and says loudly, "We're going out," before grabbing Jade by the arm. He starts at her grasp, but doesn't resist as she pulls him towards the door.

You'll give the new arrival this: He's as quick to get out of her way as Lloyd is, leaving her a clear path to pull Jade through to the street.

In the flash of the outside you see as the door opens and shuts, the rain has turned to tiny bits of hail, frozen droplets that bounce and scatter around their feet before they melt and disappear.

\----

You know you're far from the oldest flesh eater in the world. That title belongs proudly to Kratos Aurion, and until today, you thought he was welcome to it.

Until today, because - 

_about a thousand years_

Mythra is pulling you along by the hand, and you're holding tight to where her end of the emotional bleed is shock and concern and feeling, just in general, feeling so much that she can't be mistaken for anyone else. Can't be mistaken for - you won't think his name.

The hail bouncing off your head is as grounding as it is embarrassing. It's been years since you lost control strongly enough to affect the weather, not since returning from a trip into town to find a circle of flat black glass in place of your home. Not since - 

(You didn't lose _everything_ that day, but you lost enough. Hubert is still the one that hurts the most, Hubert and the gravestones you and Mythra erected for her parents, Hubert and his memories and his decision to help you and damn the consequences.)

(Even if they keep their memories when they're reborn, blades aren't immortal, and facing that realization in a plane of black reflecting your face back at you - that was where the leaks of ice you're always contending with became a torrent.)

It hadn't been raining that day, but if it had been, you imagine it would have become this, the tiniest of hailstones scattering along the path, bouncing off of everything in the world's smallest cacophony. Mythra pulls you along heedlessly, until she's pulling you up to the house where Malos and Anna live _now_ , with its huge porch full of comfortable chairs for reading set to the sound of rain. The hail is even louder, a dull roar of droplets.

You don't resist when she pushes you towards the lounge chair, dropping into a seat with your hands on your knees. There's a covered fire stand in front of you to keep the porch warm, in theory, but with all the ice ether you're putting off, it probably wouldn't light even for a fire blade.

Mythra shivers once before dropping to sit next to you, not touching but allowing you to lean on her if you want. You don't, not yet, and not because you know your skin must feel like ice itself.

"You with me?" she asks.

You exhale a shaky breath and manage to nod. You're here, mostly. 

"I thought I was old enough that that would never happen again," you say. "After all, all the humans who would have known me before the base are long dead, now." And most of the flesh-or-blade eaters in the world are at most two or three degrees removed from knowing your family, especially the older ones. 

"You can't plan for something like a thousand year old blade showing up with _memories_ , Jade," Mythra points out, in her impatiently-patient way. "Don't beat yourself up for not having a contingency plan for the literally impossible."

"I prepared for if Anna isn't the only human who reincarnates," you say. Multiple plans, really, for multiple people. "I had a plan for if we ever ran into Myyah again." For all the good it did.

"And both those things are reasonable to plan for," Mythra agrees, "considering that one of them _did_ happen, just not to us. And it's also reasonable to think that everyone who could have known you before this life is dead."

You know she's right, but you can't get out of your head - not the surprised recognition, the process of realization and disappointment. The expressions were all subtle, but you've seen them enough times before, once upon a time, to recognize them in a face you don't know. You're familiar with the moment that someone catches themselves and remembers that a blade won't remember _them_.

No, the familiar things aren't what bothers you. It was the exact span of recognition, and the sudden defeat in _of course you're not the Jade from back then._ The loss of an island washed away in the tide before his very eyes, just before he reached it.

Mythra is looking at you like she's holding back a _figure out what's really bothering you yet?_ , and you sigh, push your glasses up your face, and oblige her.

"It's cruel," you say. "After a thousand years, there must not be anything at all about this world that he recognizes. I thought I had seen the end of the cruelties that lost memories could inflict on blades."

Mythra hums. "Yeah, that's gotta be... Didn't Colette say he used to live around here? And I thought it was bad when _we_ came home..."

She leans into your shoulder, less chilled now that you've calmed down. The hail is still going, but it will be hours yet before your ether is settled enough to rein it in. 

You nod agreement. The sudden jerk of sudden loss is still there, if you think about it... But what a difference it must be, between being aware of the loss, seeing the blast of the cannon across the sky and hoping against what you find at the end of its path, and waking up to find that the entire world has moved on without you? That everything you once knew is gone, and all that remains is ruins retaken by the forest?

You have a hard enough time, at times, with the century past that you've seen with your own eyes.

"How does a blade even stay out of the system that long?" Mythra muses aloud. "I know core crystals get lost in the wilderness from time to time, but for a thousand years?"

You consider, turning over your thoughts, and say at length, "It wouldn't be impossible to remove yourself from the system intentionally."

You feel when she realizes, in the emotional bleed - Mythra of all people isn't going to be _disgusted_ at the idea, not like other blades probably would be, but there's still surprise, and a low simmer of a grudge.

"You think he..." she says aloud. "...But, without becoming a flesh eater?"

"We only know as much about flesh eaters as we do because of Anna," you point out. "And most of that research post-dated Colette's new friend. He may not have known it was an option."

"Architect, that's weird to think about," Mythra says. "I guess we won't know unless we ask, though."

And neither of you will ask unless he offers that information. Other people will be nosy enough (are probably being nosy enough at this very moment, you're sure, but you have no desire to go back to the bar right now), but asking those questions will lead places that you know that you don't want to talk about, with a blade who already knows more about you than you'd like.

Mythra might as well be catching your thoughts over the emotional bleed, because she asks, "Are you going to ask him about the Jade he knew?"

"I haven't decided," you say. Part of you wants to know, so badly, but another part of you wants to forget about it, to go back to pretending there has never been a Jade other than the Jade you are at this moment, the same way there has never been any other Mythra, Malos, or Colette.

"Well, you can't have been horrible to him, at least," Mythra says. "He didn't look at you like he hated you."

"No," you agree, softly. "He didn't, at that."

You think that you would have been better prepared if he did.

\----

Mythra drags Jade out into the rain just as it gets suddenly, exponentially louder in a way that says it's as icy outside as the atmosphere is in here. You can't remember ever seeing Jade totally lose control like that, though you've seen him leak in less significant ways before.

(When you first asked how he and Mythra met, he froze the bottle of vodka he was trying to make a drink with into more ice than slush. Malik gently took it away from him, but it was clear enough that he didn't want to talk about it, so you'd latched onto being impressed with it instead, and never asked again.)

You can't blame them for getting the hell out of dodge, if what you felt when you first met Asch's gaze was anywhere near a tenth of how Jade was feeling. For a moment, the lighting in the room was all wrong, and the angle was like you were looking _up_ \- 

Just a single moment of severe deja vu, but it's the way he looked at _you_ , with an unsettled recognition, that puts you instantly on your guard. You've had enough weird bullshit from people you don't know knowing you this year.

Fortunately, your _wonderful_ son, without even being asked, grabs onto another subject with his full enthusiasm and redirects the entire conversation. "Wait a minute - are you saying that you remember your last life?"

You laugh a little, hoping it doesn't sound too forced. (Luckily, Malos isn't here, and even if he was, he wouldn't call you on it.) "Pretty sure that's what's happening here, yeah," you say.

"That's amazing, though," Lloyd says. "I mean, I thought the only blades who could remember until we rewrote the system were the Aegises..."

You realize suddenly that no one had ever told him about Malos and Mythra and their other siblings, but, oops. It isn't as though it matters now.

"I was the product of a research project trying to create an artificial Aegis," Asch says, bringing your thoughts up short. His voice is weirdly empty as he moves his gaze over Zelos and Colette as he continues, "Obviously, someone succeeded eventually."

"People really have been trying to control the Aegis for that long, huh," Zelos says, with the quiet bitterness you hear from him sometimes under all the layers of casual he puts on top of it because there's a stranger in the room.

"Wow," Colette says. "I guess that makes us... cousins, I guess? Since we don't have the same creators."

Asch doesn't seem quite comfortable with the idea, but he doesn't rebuff her, instead saying, "Sure, I guess," which isn't the most enthusiastic declaration of family ever, but seems to be enough for Colette and Lloyd to give him twin beaming smiles. You trade a glance with Zelos, who just shrugs a little, as though to say, _what else did you expect?_ and yeah, you suppose you kind of deserve that. Lloyd and Colette have been delighted at every new bit of family they can get, and what's one more?

You wonder how old Asch actually is. Not chronologically, because if you think about how long he must have been asleep, you can feel your brain start to hurt (and Jade! Jade must be at least a thousand years old and none of you had any idea!), but in terms of memory, of life experience, of the ways blades normally count their lives. He looks a few years older than Lloyd, a young man in that weird unidentifiable way that blades age, but he stands in the middle of the room like a feral kitten introduced to a swarm of golden retrievers, too nervous around the much larger animals to swat their noses for poking into his business.

He could probably use the family. You glance over your shoulder at Malik, but he's got his bartender expression on, the one that says _I am carefully staying neutral in this conversation and letting you all forget I'm standing here._ Which is fair enough; he's probably just keeping an eye on things here for Jade's sake.

So that leaves it to you to grab your kids by the metaphorical scruff and say, "Okay, okay, come on you guys, give him some more time to adjust before you go adopting him. I'm guessing you came right here after waking up, yeah?" Asch nods in response. You hum and add, "And I take it you didn't really stick around anywhere long enough to get an idea of what's going on in the world, or get to know anyone?"

An expression stern, to cover feeling sheepish, like you've seen on Kratos a bunch of times before, but less polished. Younger. "Didn't see the point."

"And no driver?" you ask, just to confirm.

And you see, in a way Lloyd probably doesn't see, in a way that Zelos and Colette almost certainly do see but won't ask about, each for their own reasons, in a way that you and Malik have both seen too many times before - you see the way he freezes up, at the mention of a driver, and you know what the answer is going to be before Asch can even open his mouth.

"Definitely not," he says.

(And of course - why else would a blade sleep for a thousand years and only awaken now, unless it was because they knew down to their core that they never wanted another driver, ever again?)

"Well," you say cheerfully, "I can't speak for everyone, but you're welcome to stay here. We've been making a refuge for driverless blades since before blades could truly be driverless, you know what I mean?"

Another flicker of a dark look. "Yeah, I know what you mean." You don't have anywhere near the ability to decipher the levels of meaning in that look, that tone of voice, at least not yet.

So instead you say, "Everyone here has their scars. Don't go poking your fingers in ours, and we won't go poking our fingers in yours. Anyone asks a question you don't want to answer, feel free to tell them where they can stuff it."

Maybe it's the permission to not answer questions, or maybe it's the way you phrased it, but he relaxes, just a hair-thin bit, under your gaze. "Thanks," he says, and there's a bit more relaxing in the voice than in his posture.

(He's still wound tight, though. You're not sure if being in a resonance would loosen that up or wind him tighter, but either way, you're glad that resonance isn't going to fall to you.)

"Don't mention it," you say. "And I'm not going to ask how you know Jade, because that seems like something he gets to know first if he wants to, so how about we try and fill in some of the stuff you've missed?" 

You barely wait for his nod, instead focusing on dragging some of the history classes you managed to not fail in the last dozen or so years out from where your brain has been applying cobwebs. (Truthfully, you mostly paid attention to the parts about the Aegis War, because of Kratos, and the things earlier than that didn't register much.) 

"Let's see," you say. "A thousand years ago... There was a big war then too, wasn't there?" you ask over your shoulder, casting a look back at Malik. _He's_ multiple centuries old, he can give you a hand here.

"Big enough that the countries that existed back then dissolved completely," Malik says. "According to what I've heard, territory changed hands constantly for years until the first queen of Tethe'alla started gathering the remnants of the Malkuth military to her banner. Even the cities had different names back then."

Asch nods slowly, drinking in the information. "The war hadn't started yet," he says carefully. "It was in that state where everyone knew it was probably going to happen soon, but no one had actually attacked either side yet."

Malik whistles low. Lloyd and Colette are leaning forward like they're hanging off every word the two exchange, and even Zelos looks pretty interested.

"You must have had a hell of a time getting here, then," Malik says. "Hard to find your way when all the landmarks have changed names and the roads go different places, isn't it?"

Asch shrugs. "The mountains are still the same," he says, and then amends, "for the most part. There's one north of here that looks like a cannon took off half of it."

Everyone in the room winces, but Zelos the most. "That's probably because it did," you say slowly. "A couple centuries ago, there was - we call it the Aegis War, because humanity used the Aegises as weapons to fight it."

"They... what?" 

Blades, as a general rule, don't get pale exactly the way humans do. You get your first insight to what color Asch's ether must be, because the way color drains out of his face is similar enough to Kratos that it must be red underneath his skin. (Jade, of course, is always unsettlingly white to the point that you think he should be transparent. It's a common ice blade thing.)

And you don't know, actually, how you're supposed to start telling someone who doesn't know about the Aegis cannons, because it's never occurred to you that you might ever _meet_ someone who doesn't _know_ about the Aegis cannons. You're trying to sort through words for it when Zelos cuts in, voice dark and bitter and keeping his emotions at arm's length.

"They called them Aegis cannons. They stripped power out of the Aegis inside to fire raw ether across half the planet." Colette and Lloyd are both turning towards him, and you know why, but it's not your place to say anything, certainly not your place to stop him if he's willing to talk about it. If there's anyone who has the right, now, to decide how the story of the Aegis cannons will be told - 

Well, Zelos is the only one on earth who has that right, and Mithos and Martel aren't here to do it.

"Zelos..." you hear Colette say quietly.

"Doesn't surprise me that they took out part of a mountain," Zelos continues, in the fake-amused voice that you remember from so many Tethe'alla broadcasts. "If you want to see the kind of damage they can do up close and personal, just go northwest of here for a couple hours. You can't miss it."

It's your turn to wince, with a glance at Malik. You're not surprised Zelos knows the exact location of the glass, featureless except for one circle of intact ground. The thought makes the old scars on your arm ache with memory, and you wrap your left hand around your right wrist to try and soothe it.

Asch looks at Zelos, and then Colette, and you can see him putting two and two together, two artificial Aegises and two cannons. And even if it's not quite right, since the war was fought with Mithos and Martel, you can't say it's _wrong_ , either.

And the anger comes off him in waves, the ether stilling suddenly before almost _buzzing_ with the desire to do something. You can sense dark ether pretty well, even if not the rest, and the amount of ether that's being manipulated in the air is... Well, it's a lot. 

And if that wasn't enough of a clue, the way he almost _spits_ on his words, "I hope they _suffered_ for what they did to you," is proof enough of a dark blade standing in front of you. 

Zelos looks startled at the proclamation, and then a little softer, suddenly, like he's decided that okay, maybe the stranger in his home isn't that bad of a guy after all. "It doesn't matter now," he says casually. "The cannons are gone."

 _We're safe_ , he doesn't say with his mouth, but everyone in the room hears it anyway. _We're safe, and we're free._

The mutter of, "If you say so," says that Asch doesn't entirely believe him, but he'll accept it. And it's good, you think, that he can do that, that he's still a blade of justice instead of vengeance. That he can put aside his own feelings, when he wasn't the one who got hurt.

Zelos doesn't answer. Colette says, "It really is fine," in the way that's convincing to people who don't know her well.

You clap your hands and force a smile onto your face. "Right! Well, that's, probably enough of a history lesson for right now. Why don't I show you to a room upstairs, and you can get settled in? Maybe Malik can get stuff for a bath together?" You glance behind the bar, and get a nod.

"Sure," Malik says. "You must have been on the road for a while, coming from wherever you woke up, and it was pretty chilly even before it started raining. Colette, give me a hand with the water?"

Colette doesn't glance at Zelos, but from the way he looks at her, something must have passed between them on their resonance. She nods and smiles. "Sure, I'd be glad to help!"

You catch Lloyd's eye in turn, but he just says, "We'll hold down the fort for when Jade and Mythra come back," full of good cheer, and that's good enough.

"Keep an eye out for your father, too," you say. If Asch knew Jade, there's no telling who else he might have known, and Kratos... probably wouldn't handle being recognized any better. (Admittedly, you can't say for sure, but it's not like you've ever even met a flesh eater older than he is. Malik has told you about a few, before you were even born, but they're gone now.)

"Can do," Lloyd says, giving you a thumbs up, and you ruffle his hair as you lead your new guest up the stairs. Asch is quiet and looks calm enough on the surface, but dark ether still clings to him - strongly enough that when you take your eyes off him on the staircase, it takes you a minute to find him again on the landing, even though you _know_ he was right behind you.

If you hadn't been raised by a dark blade yourself, it would have given you a heart attack. Luckily, it's pretty much a matter of course for you at this point.

But you really hope it's the end of surprises, at least for the night.

\----

You're glad to have the room to yourself for a while, after Anna leaves, saying that she'll find you something to wear, that no one here is really your size but there's no point in getting clean just to put dirty clothes back on, right? You get the impression it's a bit of nervous babbling, and, well, you can't really _blame_ her.

You didn't feel unmoored, even in the ruins of the church, the way you did in front of Jade, in _they used the Aegises as weapons_. And you certainly didn't feel _sick_ , the way you did looking at Zelos and Colette and knowing ("down to your bones," as the human phrase goes) that they were created _only_ to be weapons.

There's no Van, always watching you through an emotional bleed, but you haven't let the hold on your emotions go when Colette knocks on your door and hands you a bundle of clothes - "Sorry if they're a little big, they used to be Lloyd's, but there's not really anyone here your size!" - and leads you down the hall to where the inn's bathing rooms are. It's what you assume must be an old-fashioned style, to them, because you actually recognize the sequence implied by both a shower and a full, steaming bathtub.

You're glad it's her rather than Anna, because you can't get out of your head - 

_Better luck next time._

And that your well-wishing, bitter but heartfelt, actually did some good. And how the hell are you supposed to say to a stranger, _I killed a woman who looked just like you, because she was suffering and couldn't kill herself_? How are you supposed to face an act of mercy you gave and tried to forget because it made you feel _too much_ when you were afraid to feel anything at all?

You don't let yourself feel it, think about it, until you thank Colette and close the door, and then you shed your clothes and stand in the spray of the shower, washing away the worst of the dirt and letting the feelings equally wash over you. You still can't throw off the feeling of insecurity, that it's not _safe_ to feel these things fully, and you know why, you _know why_ , but touching Van's remnants in your memories is too much, right now.

Even if Van were here, he wouldn't find anything suspicious in being fucked up by this particular thing, so you let yourself experience this, putting everything else to the side.

Architect, but she's even a blade eater. You don't remember the color of the core crystal sitting in that poor woman's chest, but you think it _had_ been dark. Could it have been purple? It could have been.

The water hits you like hot rain, almost scalding, waves of steam filling the room. You tap a thread of fire ether to keep yourself from being burned and turn it up as far as it will go. You run your fingers through your hair, dislodging dirt, and wash away blood that you know isn't really there.

She's alive. She's alive, and she has a son, and they're _happy_. You can't go ruining that by bringing up the life and death of some woman who couldn't even have been her (couldn't have been, no matter how much your intuition sings _one and the same_ at you) just for your own comfort. You've managed to set enough people off tonight, you can carry this one by yourself.

By the time you work that out of the tangle of your thoughts, you're clean enough to actually get into the bath properly. You can see why Malik asked for Colette's help with it - there's enough remnants of water and fire ether in the tub that you can tell the water's kept warm by it, in the way that only a fire blade would normally be able to manage, and that a lot of the water was conjured out of the ether instead of pulled up from a well. The ether outside is certainly wet enough, even if it must still be fairly charged with ice from the sound of hail on the roof.

You'll have to apologize properly later. You can't even say for certain why it bothers you, why something in you screamed that Jade of the Crimson Snow was _safe_ and _trustworthy_. It isn't from your intuition, which was perfectly happy with everyone in that room (you wouldn't have followed Colette in the first place, if you didn't have that certainty at the edges of your mind that she meant no harm). And it isn't just the offer that he made, once upon a time, to take you away.

It's almost like you knew him better, in another life, but there are no lives between this one and that one, and you didn't get the same feeling from him then. He didn't feel like a friend, that day in the church, and it didn't hurt that he didn't know you and you didn't know him. You don't even need your intuition to tell you that the idea that he knew you in one of your numerous, previous, short lives is wrong.

And it isn't like he could tell you what it is, now. Clearly, a thousand years have passed, and even though you could feel the subtle differences of ether that scream _flesh eater_ now that you know to look for them, he hasn't been alive _that_ long. It was Jade, but it wasn't Jade, the Imperial blade of the Malkuth Empire, and it might not even have been Jade of the Crimson Snow. More likely than not, it wasn't.

"In short," you tell your intuition, sinking up to your chin in the huge tub, "you're not helping."

Then you lean forward and sink your head under the water, letting the tension bleed out of your muscles and out of your mind. After a reaction like that, he might not want to speak with you again. And you don't begrudge him that, even if it _hurts_ for reasons you can't find an answer to. 

(Maybe it's that Jade is the answer, to your mind asking "who can I trust?" like it still needs a driver to fill the void, to provide direction, to not be alone.)

You rip your head out of the water at the thought, spraying water all around you, a full-body rejection. You don't need a driver. You don't ever have to have a driver again. That's _why_ you're safe, to think these thoughts, to feel the emotions coursing through your chest...

To pretend the way your thoughts turn towards Luke wasn't inevitable, in this unsilent silence, the hail clattering across the roof and the steam of the bath misting up your eyes.

To pretend that giving him to Guy ensured his safety in any meaningful way. To pretend that, even if he forgave you then, you'll ever have a way of knowing. (Even if he was able to keep that letter for a few lifetimes, by now it's surely lost, vanished into the mists of time. Such is the lot of blades.)

To pretend that you'll ever be able to say to him, _I'm sorry for leaving you alone_ , and have it mean something.

You weren't supposed to wake up.

You weren't supposed to remember. Dist's experiments had already failed so many times, _this_ wasn't supposed to be the time that they would succeed. Even if you had woken up, whether by a driver's hand or by _this_ , this change to the world that you couldn't have imagined in your wildest dreams, you weren't supposed to _remember_.

Water drips down your face, trailing along the hair across your forehead and down into your eyes. It allows you to pretend that there are no tears.

(With no driver, why shouldn't you cry?)

You lean forward and put your head on the rim of the tub, cool on your forehead in contrast to the water. And you let yourself drown, just for a little while, to the steam and the roar of the hail.

The thing you hate most is that you can't even say it isn't fair. When you weigh yourself in the dark places of your soul, to carry this weight... It is just, and fair, for the mistakes you made in the depths of your despair. You have no regrets and feel no sin in killing your driver with your own hands; it's in leaving your brother behind that you feel regret. It's in the knowledge that a thousand years have passed, and you don't know where he is, and he might not even know you exist.

It is a dark and private sin, and you will carry the dark and private weight of the consequences. 

And because second in you is the burn of bravery, the echo of the warmth of your twin's smile (the one time you got to see it), the warmth that was how you loved that innocent moment and the hot ash you would become again to defend it - because second in you is bravery, you don't let yourself drown forever.

When there is no difference between the damp of steam and the damp of tears on your face, you leave the bath, and begin the process of starting over.

Towel. Wring out your hair over the bathtub. Towel again. The blade in the mirror looks foreign, when you wipe away the steam fogging it up. You can't ever remember really spending the time to _look_ at your mismatched ether lines too long. At first they were unsettling, and then they were a reminder, of what had been done to make you.

Now you can look at them and think, _that's not the worst thing that's been done to blades_ , and cold comfort is probably not what you're supposed to take from the story of the Aegis cannons, but... It's there, and you have to be brave enough to face it. 

Whatever this place is, it's different, it's a place where Aegises and blade eaters and flesh eaters can all walk in the open. Even in Daath, that wouldn't have been possible. In Daath, blades had it better than in other places, but only if they were _orthodox_ , paired with drivers as part of a set and the lines between blade and human clearly drawn. Blurring them was the kind of taboo only broken in hidden laboratories that could be easily condemned by whatever government funded them.

This place is different, so perhaps you'll be able to walk in the open here, too, as what you are, with a scrap of humanity in place of ice, not enough to support yourself on but enough to mark out your face and features as a little closer to passing for human than other blades.

You trail your fingers over your own core crystal, the one that sits almost foreign on your chest, normally covered by a high-collared shirt. You wonder if there are any other blades that can almost fool themselves, after looking as close to human as they can get for so long. This is probably the only place you'll even be able to ask.

The clothes you're borrowing fit okay, at least. The pants are a little long and the shoulders of the shirt are a little narrow, but it covers everything that needs to be covered and you can't ask for more than that. There's even a pair of slippers, which. You're not much of a slippers person, but that's fine. There's no gloves, which is a little less fine, since the weirdness of your ether lines is even visible on your hands, but you can manage. You've been given official permission to tell people to fuck off if they ask questions.

The sleeves are a little long, too, and you let them hang over the backs of your hands. It provides some cover for the gentle arcs of fire-type ether lines on your wrists, though you can't do much about how they change to the cracks of an electric blade on the backs of your hands or the square, blocky glyphs of an earth blade around your fingers. You also can't change the fact that it's _more_ ether lines, on the whole, than most blades even have. 

(Colette and Zelos have normal, harmonious ether lines that wouldn't look out of place on a normal blade. At least that's enough to be sure that they weren't born the way you were.)

You debate for a while, but then finally go downstairs, if only to find out what you should do with your dirty clothes now. The common room has a different group than it did when you left, down to just four people - Lloyd and Zelos, and that blond blade who left with Jade earlier, the three of them playing cards around the table, and another light blade - no, a flesh eater, sitting at the bar and watching them. There's a hint of fondness on his features - 

You snap your gaze away, shoulders tight, and head over to the trio at the table. You don't need those thoughts right now. "Your mother didn't tell me what to do with these," you say, lifting your clothes - dirty but folded because you aren't an _animal_ \- in Lloyd's general direction. You stand in a way that lets you keep the flesh eater in your periphery, even though your intuition isn't warning you of anything from him.

It's more concerned about the way the light blade at the table is eyeing you, actually.

"Oh," Lloyd says. "There's a basket in the hall, just chuck them in there - Sophie usually does the laundry, we've got a - did they have washing machines back then?"

He casts the question at you and the flesh eater both. You blink, but the man at the bar says, "No, they've only been commonplace for about a century and a half."

"Okay," Lloyd says. ""So we've got a machine that washes clothes, and another that dries them, but if there's any special instructions for your stuff you might want to write that down, and - yeah!" he finishes suddenly, giving you a smile. "Sorry, I just realized that your clothes might be like, dry clean only or something by our standards."

"I'm sure they'll be fine," you say. "Thanks." You shove the bundle unceremoniously under your arm and put on what you hope passes for a pleasant expression as you turn to the blade woman at the table. "Sorry, I didn't get your name earlier." You hesitate, and then say _to hell with it_ to yourself. "Is Jade alright?"

"Mythra," she says, and the narrowing of her eyes isn't quite a clear, but the suspicion comes through clear as day. Instead of answering your question, she says, "What's your connection to Jade?"

"If _Jade_ wants to know, I'll tell him," you say. You manage to keep it from being a snap, if only because you're determined not to play out a scene from some kind of 'light blades and dark blades can never get along' stage comedy. "If he wants you to know, he can tell me, or you can be there when he asks, or whatever, I don't care. But that's his decision."

"He's my _driver_ ," she says, a petulant protest. You can tell from her expression that she doesn't really expect it to work, but she has to say it anyway. 

"He didn't do anything to hurt me, and I'm not going to do anything to him," you say, hoping it soothes some of whatever anxiety she has. (Because you _are_ blade, and you haven't forgotten what being a blade with a driver is like.) She looks like she's about to say more, and you add, "At least not if I can help it."

"And if he doesn't want to know?" she presses instead.

"Then he doesn't have to," you say, ignoring the way the thought hurts. (It's only a small hurt, really, like stubbing your toe in the middle of the night. Nothing you can't get over.) "It was a shock seeing him here, that's all."

Mythra considers you for another long moment, and then snorts into her hand of cards. "Okay, I can give you that," she says. "If I saw someone I knew after sleeping for a thousand years, I'd want to talk to them, too. Even if I knew they wouldn't remember me."

It's something like a truce, and you nod, relaxing your shoulders a little. At least she isn't going to push.

"I'm sure you guys will be able to talk later," Lloyd says. "I mean, unless you're planning on leaving again, but it'd be a shame if you left before you met everyone, you know? Maybe there's someone else you know around here."

Zelos elbows him. "Lloyd, most of the blades around here are artificial, remember? Mythra's the oldest of us and she's barely over a century."

"Oh, yeah," Lloyd says. Zelos makes a dramatic, put-upon sigh, while you take the chance to give Mythra another, better look. There's nothing about her that sticks out as abnormal, though; you wouldn't have even considered her being anything but a normal blade if you weren't told. It makes sense enough - make normal blades before you try for an Aegis - but you're starting to feel like winding up here was inevitable. "Still! Asch, have you met my dad?"

The way he gestures at the flesh eater at the bar is obvious, and now that you pay attention, there's a flow of ether between them - not driver-and-blade, exactly, but something similar. Flesh eaters can't have drivers, anyway, but maybe blade eater and blade? Can a blade be both flesh eater and blade eater?

But you still have to ask. "Your dad?" you repeat.

"Kratos," the flesh eater says. "And yes, I realize how unbelievable it is that I am Lloyd's father, but it's the truth."

"Why would it be - _wait_ ," you say. " _Biological_ father? Not adopted?"

"Yeah!" Lloyd says, and he springs out of his seat to go stand at the bar. "Mom says we have the same jaw, look."

You actually do look, and there _is_ a resemblance, actually. The jaw is the most prominent thing, but the upper part of the nose into his eyebrows is the same, too, and Lloyd clearly inherited his eye color from his father.

"What the hell," you say flatly.

Mythra laughs. "Yeah, don't ask," she says. "There's no logical way for it to be possible, but here we are."

"...Right," you say. "I'm going to get rid of my laundry, then." It's the best way you have to extract yourself right now. You'll deal with the impossibility of a flesh eater fathering an actual human child in peace.

As you turn to go, though, you hear Lloyd intake a breath, and he says, "Whoa, your ether lines - "

You probably don't quite disguise the way you brace yourself. Only your hands are visible, true, but that's enough, if someone's looking at the details. The mismatches of elements, the way the red shimmers through different shades instead of glowing a single solid color - 

"They're so cool!" Lloyd finishes, and you think the shock on your face has to be more obvious than when he told you his father is a flesh eater. You can feel the eyes of everyone in the room on your hand, and try to discreetly shove it further into the clothing in your armpit.

"Thanks," you manage to say. 

"Why do they shimmer like that?" Lloyd asks, not one to be discouraged, apparently. "I've only ever seen blades with a solid glow - even flesh eaters it's just dimmer and red-tinted - "

"Lloyd," Kratos says, and there's something in the way he says it that makes your core jump into your throat, makes you shrink back from an emotional bleed that isn't there - "That's enough. You're making him uncomfortable."

"Oh," Lloyd says. "Sorry."

And you think he really does mean it, but you need to get out of here, right now, so you shove a "It's fine," that you don't really mean out of your mouth, and get out of the room as quickly as you can manage.

If you slam your clothes into the basket in the hallway with more force than you really need to, before sprinting up the stairs and slamming the room's door closed, well, you're a dark blade. That usually doesn't apply as much to sound, but if you're lucky, they won't hear it over the sound of the hail that's finally, finally fading to rain.

\----

"Well," Mythra says, once Asch is out of the room. " _That_ sure happened. Nice job, Kratos."

You wince. You didn't really need it pointed out that you managed to make things worse, somehow, and Mythra takes a look at your face and at least looks sheepish about it.

Zelos sighs. "I'm not the guy to normally say this, but I don't think that was your fault," he says. "He's an artificial blade who slept for the last thousand years, and you know what? From the way he reacted when Anna asked him if he had a driver, I think it was intentional."

You turn the pieces over, and it makes sense even if you can't put the words to _why_ it makes sense for a long minute. "I reminded him of that."

"Probably," Zelos agrees. "He was watching you the whole time, even when Mythra looked like she was considering getting in a fight with him, too."

"I wasn't going to fight him," Mythra says. "Not unless he started it."

Considering that you were here precisely to make sure that she _didn't_ fight him, you give her a momentary look before you turn your attention to Lloyd, who is still looking at the door to the stairs. When he notices you looking, he gives you a weak smile.

"It's not your fault," he says. "I should've realized he was probably touchy about it - I mean, most blades who cover their ether lines do so for a reason, right? And it's not because he was pretending to be human, either."

"I've never seen ether lines like that," Mythra says. "Not just the color, either - that's a lot more than most blades have on their hands, too."

She sticks her own hand out almost for emphasis, with its circuit-like ether lines running bright green up her arm into her sleeve. Mythra has a few more ether lines than the average blade, perhaps because she's artificial, but Asch's hand makes her arm look practically plain.

"You haven't," Zelos agrees. "But the rest of us have."

You look at him and tilt your head, silently asking for him to elaborate. Lloyd says, "We have?"

"Yeah," Zelos says. He doesn't sound too happy about it. "It's a way better match in color than Colette and Martel were, but you saw their ether lines get like that sometimes if you looked at them for a while."

"Oh!" Lloyd says. "You're right, I do kind of remember that..."

Zelos glances at you, and you nod. "And the patterns being like that," he continues, "like they've been mixed up? I saw that on Mithos, at the end. Some parts of his ether lines weren't _his_ ether lines anymore."

"I don't remember _that_ ," Lloyd says. "But... you kind of got a better look at him than I did, considering."

None of the three of you specify considering _what_ , and Mythra glances around the three of you before plowing on when it's clear that no one is going to explain.

"So, what, you think he's some kind of... blade fusion?" she says. "I guess that'd explain how he could keep the rain off when he's a dark blade..."

"It's not just water ether," Zelos says. "He's got darkness, fire, and water, and at least one more. Maybe all of them."

"He did say he was the result of a failed attempt to make an artificial Aegis..." Lloyd says. This is news to you, since you missed that first conversation, and all you heard from Malik was 'new blade in town, he remembers Jade somehow, keep an eye on him.'

"There's no point speculating now," you say. "If he feels comfortable enough to tell us, he'll do so at his own pace."

Which might be never for you specifically, if the reaction he had earlier was any indication, but you're okay with that. You won't be able to avoid him entirely, but you can try to keep from making things worse.

Lloyd nods. "I'll apologize to him tomorrow," he says. "We should probably give him his space for the night."

"Just treat him like a feral cat or something," Zelos says with a laugh. "No pressure, bring him treats, that sort of thing."

You nod, and glance at Mythra. "You'll tell Jade?" you ask.

"Which part?" she asks, with an innocent look that makes you frown harder. "Yeah, I'm going to tell him what went down. Kind of have to, if he's going to be stubborn and not talk to anyone but Jade himself." She doesn't sound like she really resents it, though.

You nod. "I'll update Anna tonight," you say. 

"Then we'll tell Colette," Lloyd says. "Just so she isn't surprised, I mean. I figure everyone's going to know we've got someone new around soon enough, but..."

"They don't need to know everything," Zelos says. "But if he _is_ a blade fusion of some kind, Colette should know."

You all exchange nods. With that settled, you drop off your seat at the bar and pull a chair over to the end of the table, somewhat on Mythra's side so that Lloyd can squeeze back in with Zelos if he wants.

"Deal me in?" you say. And the night moves on like any other.

(You lose, not as badly as Lloyd, but, well, Anna always said you're too much of a light blade at heart to cheat. Not that that explains Mythra.)

\----

You beg off card games when the hail turns back into rain - a sure sign that Jade is more settled now, if the emotional bleed wasn't enough clue. You'd felt his attention, when you were actually talking with Asch, and you can only imagine what he was feeling on his end. Frustration, and frustration that you couldn't be _angry_ at the decision, because...

It really _should_ be Jade's decision. Even if the curiosity is burning a hole in your core.

The downside of the decrease in ice ether in the air is that the rain is actually rain again when you go out in it, and therefore you wind up getting soaked. There's not really much you can do about that, and you wanted a bath anyway, so it's fine. You're a little more cold resistant than most light blades, the benefit of having a driver who pumps ice ether back at you as much as you send light ether to him, but that mostly extends to never having to wear a jacket if you don't want to, not getting wet.

After your bath, you make your way up to the room that is, in theory, Anna and Malos' guest bedroom. Their house is two stories, but the bottom floor kind of sprawls out from under the top, which is just the big guest room and Lloyd's bedroom with the huge balcony garden attached. Jade hadn't wanted to go back to the family rooms attached to the back of the bar, the ones that have a separate staircase from the inn rooms Asch is staying in, just because they both lead down to the same kitchen in the morning.

If Jade can't work his shit out, you'll get Anna to get Asch to come over here, but it's fine for one night. You get your hair as dry as you can manage before you come in, towel still over your shoulders. The emotional bleed has been steady for a while, but - 

"You okay?" you say when you come in.

Jade is sitting on one of the beds (only places that expect drivers with blades more often than not have guest bedrooms with two beds, but that's exactly the kind of place Anna's always kept). He's taken off his glasses and has his hair loose, already somewhat dressed for sleep. 

"I've felt better," he says. The emotional bleed is mostly _tired_ , and a hair-thin vein of nervous that he probably isn't actively admitting to himself. "But I think I'm over the shock. Tell me, what were you able to find out about our new arrival?"

There's no doubt to either of you that Asch will be staying here for some time. Somehow, blades with nowhere to go always end up sucked into the orbit that Malik and Anna have between them. 

The way his hair is down is an invitation, after a day like this, and so you sit behind Jade on the bed and start pulling your fingers through it. You're not entirely decided on what kinds of braids to put in, for right now, so you just play with it a little as you talk. 

"Well, not a lot of concrete stuff," you admit. "First off, he said he's not going to talk about where he knew you unless you gave the okay."

"Hm," Jade replies, not really a word but an indication that he'll take that under consideration, and that you should keep talking. It's a lot packed into one noise, really.

"You didn't hurt him and he doesn't plan on hurting you," you continue. "That's all he was going to say about it. He doesn't seem like he wants to talk much about his past in general yet, but I mean that's... kind of normal, when a blade shows up without a driver." The fact that it was always flesh eaters before doesn't mean it should be any different, now that blades don't need to _be_ flesh eaters to exist outside a resonance. You divide the spread of Jade's hair over his back into halves. "He also said that... if you don't want to know, he won't force you to hear it."

"How considerate," Jade says, with the kind of sarcasm that means he actually _does_ think it's considerate, he just doesn't know how to express that straightforwardly. The emotional bleed shades with surprise, but the kind that's pleasant and warm instead of a jolt of ice water. "I'll have to think on it. The fact that he holds my opinion in such high regard only makes me more curious."

"I think Anna might've said something to him," you say. "Foresight was offering that as a possibility as we left, but I wasn't paying that much attention."

"Even if she did, it's a rare blade who takes her words to heart with such stubbornness," Jade muses. "Unless..."

"If you're going to bring up the multiple Annas thing again, I'm not doing your hair," you threaten. It's an entirely empty threat and you know it.

It's just... _weird_. You've never been as sure how to act around Anna as Jade and Malik (but then, Malik's known a bunch of her, apparently), so you never got as close to her as you might have, even though she's driving your favorite brother. You're friends, even family, but you're a blade meant to look at the future, and there's something a little unsettling about someone who knows so much of the past, even if she doesn't know she knows it.

(Of course, she knows she knows it, now. Thanks, Myyah.)

"It's just a possibility," Jade says. "His expression hesitated on her face before he noticed me."

You exhale a sigh hard enough to blow some of his hair apart, and Jade, of course, doesn't give you the satisfaction of seeing him react. "Of course you noticed something like that," you say.

Silence, for a while. You figure out what you want to do with the braids, and start weaving a braid back from over each of his ears to weave together in the middle.

"Lloyd told him that Kratos was his dad," you continue after a while. "Which was really funny because - like, I feel like we all just kind of take it for granted now? But I feel like you're probably sorry for not getting to see the 'blades don't work like that' play out on his face. But then..."

You bite your lip, tug a clump of hair into the position you want it. Jade remains perfectly still, but the way he prods curiosity into the emotional bleed is as good as him clearing his throat.

"Lloyd noticed his ether lines as he was going to put his laundry in the bin," you say. "It was just his hands uncovered, but... Holy shit, Jade, they were the most fucked up ether lines I've ever seen."

"Oh?" Now you _definitely_ have his curiosity pricked. "Worse than your brother's?"

You grimace, because yeah, what happened to Malos' arm has seriously screwed up the ether lines there - you gasped the first time you saw the scarring. "Different _kind_ of bad," you say. "Lots of little things in a fucked up whole kind of bad."

"Please, spare the details if you must," Jade says, in a tone that wants you to do anything but. You sigh again and deliberate on which part to mention first as you pull the main parts of his hair into the braid.

"He's definitely a red blade," you say. "But it was like, _multiple_ reds? And the actual shape of them - it was way more ether lines than blades usually have on their hands, they were even wrapped around his fingers. And there were at least two patterns going on there that I could see."

You grab a tie from the pile on the bed, likely pulled out of Jade's pockets earlier, and start tying up the end of the braid so it doesn't come undone in the middle of the night. "Zelos said - so like, remember how Colette and Martel were fused for a while? And how apparently Mithos just got himself all kinds of fucked up with shards of other blades? Zelos thinks it looks like _that_."

"Ah," Jade says. The little noise doesn't really do enough to express the sinking horror in the emotional bleed, the way your resonance bows with the weight of whatever he's thinking. 

"If the rest of his body has ether lines like that, I really can't blame him for wanting to cover them up," you say. "There, you're done." You drop your hands out of his hair, feeling less settled than you otherwise might.

Jade hums, running a hand over the back of his head, before turning to you. There isn't much going on in his expression, to someone who doesn't know him, to someone who isn't in resonance with him, but you've stuck to him for a century.

"Hey," you say. "Quit thinking that." He blinks at you, as close to innocent as he ever gets. "If you were one of the people who made him that way," you say, "then I don't think he'd be able to be in the same room with you. He was kind of jumpy about Kratos the whole time and practically ran for it when Lloyd actually pointed out his ether lines, there's no way he would've looked at you like..."

You'd been reeling from Jade's shock and panic in the resonance, but you'd still seen it, you would have had to be blind to miss it. But apparently Jade was blind, for once, because he just raises his eyebrows and says, "Like what?"

"Just, like it hurt him that much that you didn't remember," you say. "Like Dad looked at me in the labs." Maybe not _that_ strongly, but the feeling is still the same. The way you look at someone important to you who doesn't _know_ you.

It was only for a moment, already fading by the time you were leading Jade out the door, locked away behind the reality of what life as a blade _is_. But you recognized it all the same.

Jade sighs, and finally says, "It's impossible to imagine myself so far in the past, nevermind as someone that anyone would look on so dearly."

You cross your arms. "And why is that? You're not a bad person, Jade."

"Perhaps." Anyone else wouldn't know to interpret that as the most grudging of agreements, certainly not without the emotional bleed to help. "But good person or not, I am most certainly a _difficult_ person. Why, if it weren't for my last driver, who knows if I'd have any friends at all?"

"Don't be stupid," you say, and maybe it comes out more forcefully than you meant it to. Maybe _you're_ being more forceful than you meant to be. "I don't - do you _really_ think the only reason we cared about you was because we were stuck in that box with you?"

He stays silent, and he won't meet your eyes through his glasses. Sometimes you hate that you can still feel the echoes of Citan's apathy in him. Nothing so direct as Jade himself being apathetic, but the way it got all twisted up in how much he values himself. Citan didn't see any more value in him than his power and his willingness to do paperwork, so why should anyone else?

You fold your arms at him and say, "Look, Jade. I didn't _have_ to stay in resonance with you. I stayed because there's no place I'd rather be. And if you think my parents, or Hubert, or _Anna_ \- "

Not this Anna, because that's still... So complicated, and you can tolerate her even if you haven't forgiven her. But the Anna you've never told her about, the Anna she _knows_ about now because Myyah went stupid for whatever reason (and, okay, maybe you owe it to her to talk to her about that).

" - Just. Don't insult them by giving Citan credit for how much they cared about you," you finish, deflating steadily. It's difficult to stay angry at Jade when he's like this, because you can feel him picking at his own wounds, sometimes still raw under all the wrappings even after a century.

Jade doesn't reply immediately. Instead, he picks up the hairbrush at his side and glances at you. You know a peace offering when you see it, and shove warmth at the wall of ice in your mind before you turn around and let him get started on your hair.

It took him a long time to learn to be gentle. 

"I suppose I may as well at least try speaking to him," Jade says eventually, as he pulls your still-damp hair back over your shoulder and starts the process of brushing it in earnest. "Positive or negative, I've clearly left quite an impression. It's difficult not to be curious."

You recognize the thing he's doing, the slight sideways dodge of something that's emotionally too much for him to deal with comfortably, but... It's been one hell of a day, so you'll let it slide.

"More like impossible," you agree. "Like, forget everything about you, or whatever the hell is going on with his ether lines - imagine how different the _world_ was a thousand years ago! Like, that's before the Aegis cannons were even _built_." Nevermind everything that happened when Kratos showed up and decided to take the Aegises out of them. 

"Malik mentioned as much after you left," Jade agrees, tugging at a small knot with his fingers. You always wind up with a few at the nape of your neck after a shower. "Apparently, he unknowingly said something about a mountain peak nearby having had a section blasted out of it with a cannon _before_ anyone said anything."

That's... "Huh," you say. "That's..."

You've got a hold of the thought, but you need to contextualize it for Jade. Even as your driver, there are things you can't just send him across the resonance. "Remember how Foresight was being weird for like, an entire hour before Colette got home?" you say. "Well, it got a lot clearer once things started happening, as usual, but the whole time it was like being in a room with Alvis. Not _as_ strong, but it had the same kind of like, buzzing."

You love your youngest brother dearly. Actually being _around_ him is a pain in the ass. His Foresight's stronger than yours, and having two precognitive blades in the same room tends to result in what Klaus once characterized as "automated 5D chess" as the two Foresights both try to factor the other into their calculations. Or at least, that's what you were able to get out of the explanation, back in the day. (It's why Malos and Pyra - designed to work as a pair - don't have it.)

"Hmm," Jade says. He separates a small section of your hair out with his fingers. "I suppose it's possible. There surely must have been naturally precognitive blades at _some_ point, for the network to be receptive to the ability in artificial blades... Did you mention that to the others?"

You'd shake your head, but you know better than to do that when he's doing your hair, so instead you hum a negative. "Mm-mm. I kind of only put it together now, and besides, that's _definitely_ an ability you don't want to go telling everyone about." 

There's a reason your parents kept it from Citan, and why you generally don't tell anyone about Alvis. It's one thing for you, because the most you can make Foresight go with any degree of certainty is about half an hour, and that only by funneling enough ether into it that you can't do anything else for a while. Alvis, on the other hand? Basically a prophet. He doesn't even have to try, is the most annoying thing.

Architect, the one time you've seen him since the cannon, he told Jade _the past has no intention to hurt, but it will anyway._ If that was about this, you're going to beat him to death with his own core crystal.

"A thousand years out of water, with a bad driver history, abnormal ether lines, and potentially precognitive abilities," Jade says thoughtfully. "Possibly a blade fusion, capable of using multiple kinds of ether, and no intention of having a driver any time soon. My, Colette certainly brought home one hell of a fish."

Despite the cavalier tone, you feel a bit of dry sympathy in the emotional bleed. "He certainly chose an interesting time to wake up," you say.

"For someone like that, I doubt there could be a boring time," Jade says. He tugs your head to the side, and loosely folds your hair together into a single long braid. It wouldn't be fancy except that you think he's separated the whole thing into five parts instead of three. "No point in dwelling on it any more tonight."

He's almost certainly going to dwell on it more tonight. You say, "If you need me to stay up - "

"I appreciate the thought," Jade says, "but I don't think it will do any good, at this point. One of us may as well rest."

You sigh. "Fine, but if it starts hailing again..."

Jade laughs you off, but there's solid ground in the emotional bleed for the first time in a while. You think it will be alright, at least until morning.

Everything looks better in the morning, in your experience, except maybe Jade's eyebags.

\----

You don't dream about Citan. 

That might have been easier, because those dreams are familiar. Because you know what to do when you dream about Citan, and wake up with ice in your throat.

Instead, you dream about the last time you met someone who knew you, when you didn't know them.

You dream about Midori.

_I should explain... But I suppose no one would believe you, even if they cared._

It's been decades since you met your driver's daughter, but you still remember it so clearly. Her knowing you, you not knowing her except as a picture on a desk, obligatory if there was ever a surer definition of the word.

You wake up, remembering how you felt, _since before I was born, I think_ , and thinking that... That was already so much further back than you had known. Fifteen years had felt insurmountable.

You don't think of Midori often at all, these days. Her money has kept you afloat, when you needed it; her company, occasionally, did the same. It was always a strange relationship, one you suppose you might compare to estranged family; after all, common blood _did_ flow in your veins and hers.

You've long since put away the part of you that waited for letters. To humans, blades come and go quickly sometimes, but to a flesh eater, humans disappear just as quickly.

Midori stopped writing years before Lloyd was born. She's a grave behind a small chapel in Tethe'alla, leaving nothing behind but bones beneath a stone.

When you and Mythra returned from visiting her grave, the first and only time, Malos and a bright-eyed, eager girl named Anna had joined Malik's settlement.

You've always been afraid, on some level, that Anna wasn't the only one. The only person you'd see again, a new life for an old face. 

_I only request that you allow me to speak to you once more after this._

You let sleep and the memories fall off your shoulders like brushing off snow, and sit up. Mythra makes a noise of complaint, probably sensing your unease, but the emotional bleed indicates that she isn't quite _awake_ yet. She makes another noise as you slide your feet into the slippers at the end of the bed and stand.

"Mmmgotta get up?" she mumbles. Fondness flicks on like a lamp in the emotional bleed, as well as worry.

"You don't have to come," you say. It hasn't really gotten light outside, just yet, and you had a late night. There's a restlessness in you that's rare, a need to do something that isn't linked to ether churning under your skin. "I was just going to take a bit of a walk."

"No, no, I'm coming, don't you dare," she says, still sleep-grumbling but sliding out of bed. Malos has a pair of slippers set aside for her, but as usual, she's chosen to slide around the wooden floors in socks instead.

No one else in the house seems to be awake, not even Lloyd or Anna on a late night project. The only one awake is Maude, curled up on the back of the couch as you two make your way to your shoes at the door, lit only by brilliant green and dark, fuzzy red.

Maude makes a sound that is halfway between a meow and a small dog's bark, and Mythra sighs, scratching the cat's ears briefly. "You're such a weird fucking cat," she mutters, before catching up to you with a quiet slide across the floor. Maude seems content to remain where she is, rather than following you to the door.

The rain has stopped, but the world beyond the house is still vaguely drippy in the way of saturated tree branches and grass coated in droplets. There's not much light yet, not that that matters much. Mythra provides plenty of light on her own, the green adding a slight element of surrealism to the morning.

Almost automatically, your feet lead you towards home, and in the dull predawn you can almost forget - 

There's a gleam of red on one of the inn balconies. At first, even though you recognize the shape as a person, you don't recognize the glow as ether lines. It shifts as though beneath the surface of water, and you can't really recall the last time you saw a red blade with unfettered glow; all the red blades you know, yourself included, are flesh eaters.

But then your brain jumps the gap, and you realize who it is at what must be the same time Asch looks down and notices the two of you. Your eyes meet, again, but this time it doesn't yank your heart and core crystal out of the rhythm you've grown used to.

It simply... Is.

"Jade?" Mythra asks quietly at your shoulder. You realize that you've come to a stop, staring up at that balcony. Asch _had_ been leaning on the railing, with his sleeves pushed up enough to reveal the ether lines on his forearms - and _oh_ , now that you get a good look at them, they really are almost disturbing, connected in a disjointed way. You're reminded of an AI project you saw someone working on in college, which generated fake names by taking parts from a list of real ones. If someone applied that method to ether lines, the result might look something like this, like the self-conscious blade who pulls his arms back from the railing so that his sleeves fall back over them.

"It's all right," you tell Mythra. 

It isn't, exactly, but it's as close as it's going to get until you get some answers. (It can't be as bad as Midori. Whatever it is can't be as bad as knowing that Citan had you for longer than you thought.)

And as to those answers, well, there's not going to be a better time to get them, with no risk of being overheard, is there? There's no one else awake at this hour, at least not on this night.

Mythra must see what you're planning in either the emotional bleed or Foresight, because she takes a step closer to you and whispers, "Are you _really_ ready for this?"

"I never will be," you whisper back. So you may as well get it over with. Shovel the path, so to speak, so that you can see what's underneath. You glance up, and pitching your voice to carry, ask, "Care to join us for a walk?"

A pause. "Yeah, sure," Asch says. "Let me put shoes on." And then he vanishes back inside.

"We've got like, a minute and a half," Mythra says. "Jade..."

"He said he meant us no harm," you say. "I'm choosing to believe him. Besides, we needn't go far - there's a path of ruins much nearer than where Colette found him that should be suitable." Far enough away that there's no risk of freezing anything you care about if it goes badly, close enough that it will be obvious what happened if things go worse.

Mythra considers it, and then nods, after a pull on your ether that's very definitely a check into Foresight. "Yeah, okay," she says. "It doesn't look like he's going to try anything, at least; Foresight's sure about that and not much else."

"Still the same as with Alvis, then?"

"Mm-hmm," she agrees.

"Perhaps we can ask about it, if we have time," you suggest.

"Maybe," Mythra allows. "Can't really ask without telling him about it, though."

"If he has a similar ability..." you say, beginning to speculate in earnest, when the sound of the door opening again catches your attention.

If you didn't know he was there, you're not entirely sure that you would have seen the way Asch slips out of the door and closes it. He's covered all of his ether lines back up, glowing no more than a human and far less noticeable. A dark blade fully in his element, late at night in the quiet of a small town. Your eyes don't even want to follow him as he steps out onto the balcony and simply jumps over the side to land on the ground.

It's so very much a not-normal way of going about the task that you find it mildly surprising. There's no logical reason not to, but it sits strange in your mind, a detail that you'll come back to later.

But when he actually walks over to you, it's like whatever made him so difficult to see turns off. Like this, hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of pants borrowed from Lloyd's castoffs, he doesn't look nearly so out of place. Even the oddness of feeling the churn of ether inside someone without visible ether lines isn't so odd anymore. You're used to covering your own, after all, and you've known as many blade eaters as you have flesh eaters pretending at being human.

You look him up and down, and say, "I hope you'll be warm enough in that." You don't mean the weather, except for the way you do, because you're sure he couldn't have missed the rainstorm turned hail earlier.

A flicker of an expression, hard to make out in the dim lighting of only Mythra's ether lines, maybe a wry smile. "I'll manage somehow," Asch says, and - oh, that is almost teasing, the way fire ether surges around him just long enough to warm the air before fizzling out again. "Lead the way."

You turn to do so, very much aware of the presence behind you that isn't Mythra, the way that Mythra walks behind _him_ just in case he tries something. It's exhausting, suddenly, this dance of knowing just enough to be suspicious of him.

You wanted to know because you're curious, and because not knowing itches like a burr under your skin. Now you have another reason - because you'll be damned if you live another day like _this_ , feeling like you can't trust anything and every knife you've balanced on is tipping over at the same time. It's no way for any person to live, and you have no intention of doing so.

The walk is quiet, except for the noises of the night - even Mythra's footsteps seem somehow quieter than usual. It's only around ten minutes to the patch of ruins closest to your town, the ones that Raine partially excavated the one time she visited since the rewrite of the blade system. The rainproof sheet she set up over it is still there, some months later - it can't really be called a tent, but it offers a dry place to sit on the exposed stone.

Asch hesitates, in what you suppose would have been the threshold of the building. In the dark, it's impossible to see what emotions ficker over his face before he finishes following you under the cover, but he swings his head back and forth over the whole of the ruin as if taking stock of something.

You sit down in a corner, and Mythra sits next to you, pulling her feet all the way up on the low stone wall to cross them in front of her. She conjures a light with a bit of ether, a white orb in the ceiling of the raincover, before putting her arms over her legs, one elbow on each knee. 

Asch sits on the other wall of the corner. In the better light, his expression is somber in a way that suggests an impersonal sort of grief for whatever must have been here before.

You consider your approach for barely a moment. You put off cutting to the heart of things for long enough, once before, that it almost killed you (again, for at least the third time). You don't see a point in doing so now.

"How did you know me?" you ask. _Did_ , and not _do_ , because you are strangers now.

And this time you can watch all of the emotions play across his face, even if you can't place all of them before he covers his face with one hand. A bitter sound that is almost unrecognizable as a laugh escapes from underneath. You freeze, only a little ether leaking before Mythra puts a hand on your elbow.

"It was in this building," is how the conversation starts, and you - can't fault anyone, for a painful laugh at the irony of that. There's no way anyone should be certain of such a thing, after a thousand years passing, and yet the words are said with such a confidence that you can't bring yourself to doubt them.

And so you... reassess. It's rattling, to know that there are places in the world that you've walked that you can't remember. Somehow worse than the people, because the people you've known and dealt with having forgotten. It is a part of being a blade that every blade makes their peace with, over and over again.

But places - you've never looked around a building and thought of it as anything more than a building. You've never considered grieving for a _place_. And now you're sitting in the remains of a building that you have visited at least once before, and you can't help taking another, longer look at it, and wondering, _Did this place mean anything to me?_

"That's a mindfuck," Mythra says quietly, putting your thoughts so succinctly. 

"You have no idea," Asch replies, equally quietly. And then he squares himself up again, and continues to tell the story. "It was the private lab of a blade researcher of the time - a man called Dist who worked on blade memory. It was just coincidence that we met here, as much as anything in my entire damn life has been a coincidence."

It's a bit of melodrama that you find that you really, _really_ can't hold against him, if this is anything like his normal. You're feeling a touch dramatic yourself. "My driver?" you probe carefully, braced for the answer.

"No," Asch says, distinctly, firmly, as though he knows the things you're afraid of that you cannot name. "You were... the reason behind his research, from what I was able to put together. He knew you in the life before that one, and wanted to bring your memories back. You were there to tell him to give up on it, because you weren't the same person as that Jade."

"I'm going to choke to death on the irony," you say, tone dry. 

"Please don't," Mythra says, equally blandly. The emotion bleed, however, is ridged with concern.

"Better not to tempt fate," Asch agrees. "It likes to hang over my shoulders to point and laugh."

Another statement that would be the height of melodrama if it weren't for how matter of factly he says it. Whatever it is Asch has been through, you realize, it's gotten him to the point where he _expects_ this kind of thing. Your curiosity comes to the forefront again.

"And you?" you ask.

And it's easy to see the instant the darkness comes back to his expression, easy to see the way that you've unknowingly put your finger in something that Asch would rather not talk about. It's impressive, really, the way he settles those shadows around his shoulders and soldiers on. Impressive, in a way you're glad you're not sharing an emotional bleed with.

"I was there," he says slowly, "because I was desperate for a way to keep my memories when I died." He snorts, the same ironic amusement turned dark, and adds, "Of course it worked when I had finally given up on it."

Something in the way he says it strikes a chord of familiarity. Worse than a burr or splinter in your skin, this is - 

Mythra's grip on your arm tightens. "Jade," she says, something painful in her tone, in her end of the resonance, something that Foresight must be telling her before Asch can tell you himself. Something that she thinks you will regret asking.

But that just sets your certainty, locks the molecules of wondering into the crystalline form of the need to know, the truth with sharp edges that you need to hear, even if you'll regret it.

"Why?" you ask.

"Because my driver was killing me," Asch replies.

 _Oh_ , you think detachedly, as chunks of ice form around you, filling the night with the quiet, sharp sounds of breaking. _I do regret asking._

The ice doesn't harm you or Mythra, of course - it just cracks outwards around you. Asch isn't as lucky, but his reflexes are fast, and perhaps if he is a precognitive blade, he saw something of it coming. He certainly gets out of the way quickly enough, a diving roll out of the way of one of the larger spikes.

Mythra is latched much more firmly onto your arm now, her end of the resonance trying to project calm when you know she's really feeling anything but. Who could, hearing something like that? Everyone you've ever trusted enough to tell has been appalled, human or blade, not that that's a very long list.

You wonder if Asch is actually that matter of fact about it, or if that's how he handles _this_ , the storm brewing inside you - by removing himself from it before it destroys him. You're certainly familiar with how that kind of shutting down works, removing yourself from the emotions before your driver feels them, before they can incriminate you and cost you another life.

Mythra understands, to some extent, but she was never any _good_ at it. That was the problem. Asch, you think, must be better, at least a little bit, if only through practice that no blade should ever have to have. He would know how it feels, hiding everything you feel from even yourself, so that no one else in the emotional bleed can see it.

You're glad you're not in resonance with him. (You also think that, maybe, he might be the first person other than Mythra that you could stand being in a resonance with, because you wouldn't have to explain what you're going through right now, why your first impulse when you feel any strong emotion is to stifle and hide it away.)

"A perfectly understandable reaction," your mouth says without your mind telling it to, as though you didn't just have the completely _un_ -understandable reaction of reflexively shooting giant ice crystals everywhere. 

Mythra gives the emotional bleed an incredulous prod, clearly meaning _Are you REALLY going to just carry on the conversation as though you didn't do that?_ , which you don't dignify with a response. You can't find much of one, anyway, the sharp edge of panic still foremost in your mind like the chill of hypothermia must sit in a human even after being pulled from the icy waters of a lake. You've always heard it described in such fanciful terms as being in someone's bones, anyway.

The truly bizarre thing is how Asch, already, seems to be taking it in stride. He doesn't smile, to cover what must be an emotional deadening of some variety, but he picks himself up and dusts himself off with the same kind of casualness that you have. Perfectly content with, or perhaps understanding of, your desire to move the conversation along as though that didn't just happen.

A bit of fire ether tingles at your senses as he breaks some of the ice apart, enough to clear his seat again. The giant, chilly crystals get shoved unceremoniously over the wall, where they will probably still be in the morning. The whole process gives you a moment longer to breathe, to fight the ether down, to get back to putting on the appearance of normal.

Mythra squeezes for your attention again, a questioning poke at the resonance, and you're not sure what she's asking or asking for, but you're perfectly content to let her lead for a moment, so you nod. She asks, "Why didn't you just kill your driver, then? Become a flesh eater - even a thousand years ago, that was a thing people did, right?"

"It was," Asch says, and there's a bitter firmness in it. "But you can't use the same heart twice, not for that."

It takes painfully long, considering everything, for your mind to catch up with that. Under any other circumstance, you'd get there instantly.

"Your driver was a flesh eater," you say. The panic in your mind stops its flailing along the surface and sinks, down into the abyss of horror.

It was one thing for Citan to do this, a human, someone who would never understand what life was like for a blade. _Another_ blade, flesh eater or not - 

"You did kill him," Mythra says, with the same sort of realization. It snaps into place, making sense of another piece of the puzzle, of the way he'd almost flinched when Anna asked about it.

It took you years, to work out Citan's death, to make yourself okay with it after you had done it. Blade instincts to protect their drivers are simply that ingrained, you suppose. 

For all that blades talk about becoming flesh eaters as their only ways out of a truly horrible driver situation, you're the only one you know who has actually done it. The only flesh eater, among your group of flesh eaters, who has their driver's blood on their hands of their own desperate will. Kratos and Malik didn't have a choice in the matter. The Sage siblings are like you, you think you remember Lloyd mentioning offhand, but you certainly haven't spoken to them on the matter.

For the first time, you sit across from another blade who murdered their driver, and under all of the layers of horror, you feel a sense of vindication, of _validation_ , that almost makes you ill with how it rises up out of the depths and seizes hold of your chest. You are not the only one who took justice into your own hands in that particular way, and more to the point - 

The crime was the same.

(You're not insensitive to justice. That's why you and Mythra fit together so well, because for all your bickering, when it comes down to the _important_ things, you agree. But it is somehow different, somehow more objective, to know that someone you _don't_ know understands what you did, and did the exact same thing, or at least the closest he could come to it.)

You sit across from a fellow murderer, and you realize that thinking about what happened as being a thousand years ago is wrong. For you, the time doesn't really matter, and for Asch...

Two years ago, at most, but you think probably much less than that, if he came directly here after waking up. Days, weeks maybe, a month at the outside.

"You're doing well," you tell him, meaning it earnestly. "Even with Mythra's help, it took me months before I could talk about it. I'm not sure what would have happened if I was alone."

Asch looks startled, the same kind of startled-by-kindness that you see at times on Colette, the confusion of a person used to such kind words being for other people. It makes him look younger. (You wonder how old he is, effectively rather than literally.)

"I didn't expect help," he says. "Everyone who helped me before... Even if they're still alive, they're gone."

"Including me," you say, and there isn't a denial of any kind, just a flicker of something sad and broken-edged in his expression before he nods. You didn't really need the confirmation, because it's the only explanation for the way he locked onto you in a room full of strangers, for so much pain when you didn't know him.

"Including you," he says. "Even if I didn't take you up on it - the Jade who offered me a way out, to get me to a better place with a better driver? I can't ever forget him."

You breathe in. You breathe out. You say, "It's nice to be remembered for the good things one has done," and you mean it.

Mythra says, "Why didn't you? Take him up on it, I mean?"

Asch's storm comes back to his face, in the form of a grim expression. "He was after my brother - my twin. He wanted both of us, like two halves of a set. I wasn't going to leave him to just... get his hands on Luke when I couldn't do anything about it. Definitely not when I wouldn't have remembered that he was in danger in the first place."

And you understand. You don't so much think about how you would have reacted, to Citan trying to hunt down your sibling, as much as you know, instantly, that he wouldn't have lived another day. Sibling blades aren't that uncommon, though most are only pairs rather than the staggered gaggle of siblings Mythra has.

You understand too, you think, the feeling of responsibility for one's driver, the duty that comes with needing to be sure that they don't hurt anyone else ever again.

You understand Asch better than you'd like to admit, all in all. Better than you want to admit to his face, right now.

You adjust your glasses with a sigh. "It's hard to argue with that. Some might even call it noble, taking responsibility like that."

"'Commendable' was the word you used the first time," Asch says quietly. The feeling it gives you must be the one that humans are describing when they talk about someone walking over their graves.

"Was that the only time we met?" you ask. "Because, forgive me, but I seem to have made a rather strong impression." Certainly, no one can begrudge him flinching away from Kratos, with a history like that. It would be only natural for him to distrust flesh eaters as a whole, and yet you seem very much to be an exception.

"I don't understand it either," Asch says. He frowns, brows crinkling together into something that almost passes for a glare, and looks off to the side. "There's no reason for it to feel like losing an old friend."

"Grief is not known for being reasonable," you say. "I've lived this life long enough to see friends of my own be reborn without any memory of me, and I daresay it gets no easier with time."

"Even humans only live so long," Asch agrees. "Blades less, since we don't typically outlive them."

You are, you realize, expecting him to ask. It's only logical, and fair, for you to reveal... At least something, to match the weight of what he's told you, and justice and fairness walk hand in hand. It's unsettling you that he doesn't, hasn't.

Perhaps Mythra was right in comparing him to Alvis, because you can think of no one else who has given you this feeling, like anything you might explain is something he already knows. They have nothing else in common but red ether, but now that you have the impression, you can't seem to shake it off.

He's a stranger, and you owe him nothing.

(Everything you are, you owe to people who were once strangers.)

You lean into Mythra's reach, and she takes the cue to scoot closer to you. Her concern filters into the emotional bleed, and you can guess why even if you don't look too closely at your own emotions. You aren't that terribly touchy-feely, in comparison to much of the rest of the extended family you now find yourself with. From most people, it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant, provoking no particular emotional reaction, though you can't say you particularly appreciate being touched by strangers.

Citan didn't touch people. You remember Midori once making a joke about her scheduled Annual Father Hug, back when her parents still lived together. It matched your experience of the man. To touch other people simply wasn't a priority for him, a trait you seem to have inherited, or perhaps had in common to start with. Mythra is the only person who you often seek touch from, though you enjoy sharing space with Malik in a way that isn't quite the same.

You're getting distracted.

"I'm starting to think you might be onto something, expecting the level of irony in life that you do," is what you manage to put together. 

Asch looks as though he's going to reply, but you hold up a hand, the one that Mythra isn't holding, and he takes the signal to stop.

 _I'm in no position to judge you,_ you don't say.

 _There's nothing that could have justified it,_ you don't say.

 _The thing about remembering our drivers is that we'll never be truly free of them_ , you don't say.

You say, bright and cheerful as sun on snow, "Well, at least I'm not the only one who murdered their driver around here anymore. I understand not wanting to scream it from the rooftops."

 _I understand,_ you don't say, certain that he'll hear it anyway.

And you were right, because Asch looks at you, looks through you, and says, "It's not murder when it's self defense, Jade."

Something nasty, a sharp shard of ice, catches on your breath.

"If only the law saw it that way," you say amicably, instead.

Asch snorts. "If only the law saw us as people, you mean?" he says. "I can only imagine how much worse it's gotten."

"The important part is better," Mythra says. "The law will catch up eventually, right?"

She's the optimistic one, always has been. You feel it in the resonance, buoying you up, just a little, in a place that needs both light and lightness after the places this conversation has gone.

It doesn't skip your notice, that Asch, possible precognitive, perhaps even to the same extent as Alvis, doesn't join in the optimism.

So you reach up and adjust your glasses, and say, "We can only hope."

\----

Dawn comes while you are still sitting with Jade, in the ruins of Dist's house, feeling out of time even if you aren't out of place. You're where you belong, in a way, just too late, too late.

Jade's stopped asking questions. You have more you want to say, more things that are just waiting to cascade out of your mouth, but he hasn't asked, and he might not. There's time, you keep telling yourself. You're a free blade, one who remembers, and he's a flesh eater in good health. Neither of you is going to die any time soon; neither of you is going to forget, ever.

He wants to know. You feel it like you feel the ice in the air, the ether just out of your reach. You just... have to give it time.

(Ha. Somehow you know without knowing, that all of your lives have been short and furious and bright-burning. You don't know how to give anything time.)

There's something else, bright-burning, in you, waiting to be said. To be known, in all of its terror. You breathe deep, of the flame, of the memory of your brother.

"My turn," you say. "And I need you to promise to keep quiet about this."

"Of course," Jade says, immediately, looking at you like he knows you know. (What it is, exactly, that you know, you don't know yet. There's only so much knowing you can stand to pull from your intuition in one day, and the way he looked at you and _understood_ , you're not sure you're ready to know that yet.)

(You know it was justified, whatever it was he did. Whatever it was his driver did. You would know that even without your intuition, know it on the simple matter of it being Jade.)

It's too hard to ask directly. It hurts too much, and you aren't that brave. If you were, you're the one who would have been fire, and Luke would have been... Something else. Light, maybe, like his name.

You undo the series of buttons that hold your borrowed shirt closed to your collar, and you say, "Have you ever seen another blade with a core crystal like this?"

You say it as evenly as you can. You're prepared for the way Mythra, especially, looks at it and is shocked, almost flinches.

You're less prepared for Jade's lack of reaction, the way he just looks it over carefully before saying, "I can't say I have," with a note on the end that sounds almost like an apology.

(But then, he's a genius, and after you already mentioned Luke, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why you're asking.)

You exhale, slowly, and start buttoning your shirt back up. He's not dead. You feel certain that you would know, if he were dead.

"How many of you were there?" Jade asks, just simple curiosity behind it.

"Two sets of two," you say. "Red and green."

"Can I..." Mythra starts, and then trails off. Her eyes are on your chest, even though your shirt is closed again, before she very sharply looks away. "No, I shouldn't ask. Sorry."

You know what she wants to ask.

You also know that you don't have any answers that she'll want to hear. You can feel it singing in her, that she's something new, and whole, and not made of broken pieces. A true artificial blade, not like you. Created from scratch instead of scraps.

You say, "I'll tell you some other time," because you don't know if you have it in you, today, and you know that they don't.

"You'll be staying, then?" Jade says.

You shift, looking away, at the approaching dawn. The pinks are familiar. You've seen that color recently.

"At least for a while," you say. "It's not like I have anywhere else to go."

It was your home, once, when there was glass in the windows, roofs on houses, people in streets. As much of a home as you ever had, keeping yourself separate, sick to death with fear and secrets.

Maybe it can be home again. Maybe it can be home for the first time.

You could get used to having somewhere to come home to.


End file.
